I just received word from the ICELAND WRITERS’ RETREAT with the names of the winner and follow-ups in the contest for a free spot at the retreat. I was not the one. Not second or third, either. Just an also ran. But I believe I promised to print it here if I didn’t win. The limit was 350 words. We were supposed to write something about a picture they showed us, of a mountain peak sheathed in mist, and why we wanted to go to the retreat. Here’s my puny effort:
UP IN THE AIR
It’s like a race memory, this ethereal image of light and cloud above a hidden peak, like some elusive chimera lurking around the edge of my subconscious. I kept wanting to find it, to focus on it, to discover something I needed. Mind you, I’ve had glimpses. That’s why I’ve been so persistent in my search.
My Afi (grandfather) built the house for his family in Gimli (Manitoba) in 1908, old by Canadian standards of age. He had it wired for electricity about 20 years before Gimli got power. He put a windmill on the barn/garage in the hope of generating enough power to give light. Every morning and every evening he would look out the kitchen window at the windmill and say the first Icelandic words I heard (repeatedly): “Mill hefur ekki pumpa y dag.”
That’s what I heard. That verb sounds English. I asked my Amma what he was saying. She was the only one who didn’t mind teaching me a little Icelandic. I wish I’d asked for more. Anyway, she translated for me: “The mill hasn’t pumped today.”
Afi had the house built according to plans he bought from a Chicago firm, but he hired a local artist to paint the house, the main floor, that is. A rampant polar bear on an ice floe in the den snarled noiselessly (and unforgettably). (Polar bears?) A broad mural in the dining room depicted a rural farm scene with, I suspect now, a lot of wishful thinking that ignored the lava from Hecla that sent Afi and his fellow emigrants to Canada. There were more paintings but you get the point, the point being that I saw Iceland before I ever saw it--but no fire and ice.
Growing up in Manitoba, I knew nothing of mountains. We had lots of snow though, and the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) with celestial colours hinting at what I longed for. So is it any wonder, my feeling of déjà vu when I finally saw Iceland, and why I have to return as often as I can?
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Well, at least I tried.
The new book tomorrow, I promise.